Trump Administration Weakens Endangered Species Act, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A 1973 Law Was Still Pulling Animals Back From The Brink Of Extinction

WASHINGTON. The Trump administration on Monday finalized a sweeping set of regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act, the 1973 law widely credited with preventing the extinction of the bald eagle, the grizzly bear, the American alligator, and the California condor, resolving a long-standing concern that the statute was still doing exactly that.

Under the new rules, approved by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, federal officials weighing whether to protect a vanishing species may for the first time factor in the economic cost of doing so, ending a decades-old requirement that listing decisions be based solely on the best available science. Officials may now calculate what a given snail, fish, or migratory bird would cost the economy before deciding whether it is permitted to continue existing, a determination the previous framework had inexplicably reserved for biologists.

The revisions also strip newly designated threatened species of the automatic protections they had long received, replacing the blanket safeguard with a case-by-case process to be conducted at the agency's discretion. Protections for critical habitat were narrowed, and the standard for considering future threats was tightened in ways that conservation groups noted would make it substantially harder to account for the effects of a warming climate on species that have not yet finished going extinct.

Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for oil, gas, and agricultural interests, framed the overhaul as a service to the very wildlife it governs. The changes, he said, "fit squarely within the President's mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species' protection and recovery goals," a burden that conservation biologists pointed out had until that morning consisted largely of not driving animals to extinction.

A source within the administration described the rule as a commonsense modernization. "The law was nearly fifty years old and still functioning as written," the source said. "At some point you have to ask whether a statute that has kept ninety-nine percent of listed species from disappearing is really meeting the needs of the people who would prefer to build on that land." Industry groups representing energy producers, miners, and developers, who had sought the changes for years, praised the rollback as overdue. A coalition of states and environmental organizations announced plans to sue within hours.

At press time, the bald eagle, recovered under the old rules and removed from the list as a triumph of the law, had been informed that the ladder it climbed up was being quietly taken down behind it.